The Global Consciousness Project

 
What is the nature of Global Consciousness?

Nigeria, 86 Children Burned by Boko Haram

Boko Haram extremists burn children to death as they kill 50 villagers by fire bombing huts in new Nigeria attack More than 50 people were killed when armed Boko Haram fighters stormed the village of Dalori, northeastern Nigeria Children were among those burnt to death when extremists opened fire and torched homes after evening prayers Residents who tried to escape by fleeing to nearby bush were later hunted down and shot dead by insurgents See full news coverage from Nigeria on Boko Haram as new attack kills 50 villagers by fire bombing huts Children were among those killed when Islamist terror group Boko Haram torched a village in north-eastern Nigeria, according to reports. As the full extent of the tragedy became clear, the count of massacred children increased, and at this writing, it stands at 86 burned to death.

Specific Hypothesis and Results

The GCP event was set for 6 hours beginning at noon, local time. The result is Chisquare 21708.6099 on 21600 df for p = 0.2998 and Z = 0.5249.

Interpretation

The following graph is a visual display of the statistical result. It shows the second-by-second accumulation of small deviations of the data from what’s expected. Our prediction is that deviations will tend to be positive, and if this is so, the jagged line will tend to go upward. If the endpoint is positive, this is evidence for the general hypothesis and adds to the bottom line. If the endpoint is outside the smooth curve showing 0.05 probability, the deviation is nominally significant. If the trend of the cumulative deviation is downward, this is evidence against the hypothesis, and is subtracted from the bottom line. For more detail on how to interpret the results, see The Science and related pages, as well as the standard caveat below.

Nigerian Children Burned
Cumulative Deviation during event

Standard caveat

It is important to keep in mind that we have only a tiny statistical effect, so that it is always hard to distinguish signal from noise. This means that every success might be largely driven by chance, and every null might include a real signal overwhelmed by noise. In the long run, a real effect can be identified only by patiently accumulating replications of similar analyses.